


Treatise On The Stupendous Lunacy Of Formalised Duelling, by Palamedes Sextus, M.W., Sr. Sch., MA N-Psy, MA N-Med

by darlingofdots



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Point of View, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, cam jam for the cam stans, gratuitous use of synonyms, the duel with the second from pal's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingofdots/pseuds/darlingofdots
Summary: “I have no idea what any of that means,” said Palamedes. Another tally on Cam’s ever-growing list of ways in which he failed as her adept, and a shortcoming he intended to correct at the earliest possible opportunity. It was a long list (1. insufficient caloric intake, 2. misplacing his spectacles, 3. losing pencils, 4. wearing mismatched socks to a Faculty meeting, 5. hogging the blankets). One of these days, he might write it down. She’d get a kick out of it.Cam's duel against Marta Dyas, through Palamedes' eyes.
Relationships: Camilla Hect & Palamedes Sextus
Comments: 9
Kudos: 60





	Treatise On The Stupendous Lunacy Of Formalised Duelling, by Palamedes Sextus, M.W., Sr. Sch., MA N-Psy, MA N-Med

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise in advance for the horrific overuse of commas and inevitable gross misunderstandings of human anatomy.

The Master Warden of the House of the Sixth was not a fighter. He was no politician, either, nor a socialite. He was, to all intents and purposes, a librarian — an academic, a scholar of the abstract and obscure. His specific expertise may lie in the application of necromantic principles to curative processes but only out of immediate necessity; at heart, he was a psychometrist, an art by which the practitioner determined an object’s age, composition, and some of its history by the mere act of laying hands upon it. Even now, he was contemplating the contents of the incinerator, although he had returned the sharp fragments of a bicuspid and incisor to the bowl and carefully wiped the ashes from his fingers. At least two different bodies, four weeks dead, the cavalier of the Seventh missing, and the tension between the surviving inhabitants of Canaan House rising to the point that Camilla could probably cut it with a knife. He rested his chin on his steepled fingers. The Master Warden was not a fighter.

Captain Deuteros thrust her chin in his direction. “Warden, the Sixth is the Emperor’s Reason. I asked you earlier, and I’m telling you now: hand over what keys you’ve won for my safekeeping.”

Palamedes blinked. The room shifted back into focus. His mind, which had been otherwise occupied but was never truly inattentive, replayed the Captain’s words, analysed the pitch of her voice, the angle of her head and the at-attention position of her boots on the cracked tiles.

“With all respect,” he said, “piss off.”

It got worse from there.

The Crown Princess of Ida attempted to intervene, which was generous and futile. Even if her sister had not prevented the cavalier from standing up for the Sixth, Palamedes had considered the situation as weights on a scale. On one side, the risks (1. death, 2. injury, 3. defeat), on the other, the benefits (1. holding their own, 2. preventing the Second from accessing the facility, 3. defending the Sixth House’s honour), all balanced on the central fulcrum of the way Camilla had shifted behind him, the minute hiss of air as she breathed in. The next ten minutes played out in his head, over and over, accounting for a dozen different variables. He tapped the frame of his glasses against the table: a question.

“Default, Warden,” said the captain. “You are a good man. Don’t out your cavalier through this.”

At his shoulder, Camilla exhaled: an answer. He pushed his chair back, squeaking horribly on the tiled floor.

“No, we’re doing this,” Palamedes said, his tone sharp and clipped. “I pick here.”

The captain said, “Sextus, you’re mad. Give her some dignity.”

He did not even stand; just crooked his finger at his cavalier. Some part of him wanted to smile, to grin in grim satisfaction of what he was certain was about to happen, but he squashed that impulse. Insufficient evidence. He felt the tension flood out of Camilla like the relief of painful anticipation at last resolved, watched her shake her hair from her face and drop her hood and cloak where she stood before rolling her neck to loosen the cervical vertebrae, the way she did before a fight or an exam. He did not hear the pop of synovial fluid but saw the flex of her fingers, the subtle shift in her posture.

For the first time he regretted that he had never given her the opportunity to participate in official duels. They had agreed that formal duels were a waste of her time, when they had both been thirteen and combing through the yellowed pages of illuminated manuscripts for data on bladed weapons, because the cavalier manuals and etiquette guides provided insufficient instruction about the practical aspects of protecting one’s necromancer at best and, at worst, were a colossal bore, according to Cam. Palamedes had withheld judgement on that aspect. There had been practice bouts at Swordsman’s Spire of course, but few of the other Sixth House cavaliers measured up to Cam’s force and skill even then, and to compete in the tournaments they would have had to travel off-house, which Palamedes’ duties would not have permitted even if they had wanted to. The analytic part of his mind had no doubts about his cavalier’s proficiency with a rapier; the sentimental part that fretted every time she came home with a fresh bruise or an oozing cut was utterly terrified. There was a third part, the part that had listened to the Master Templar’s justification for appropriating Lady Septimus’ keys and seen the way Captain Deuteros looked at from Jeannemary the Fourth to Gideon the Ninth to Camilla, and that part was cold with rage.

The Crown Princess called, “Clav to sac—?”

“Hyoid down, disarm legal, necromancer’s mercy.”

And he had no idea what any of that meant. “I have no idea what any of that means,” said Palamedes. Another tally on Cam’s ever-growing list of ways in which he failed as her adept, and a shortcoming he intended to correct at the earliest possible opportunity. It was a long list (1. insufficient caloric intake, 2. misplacing his spectacles, 3. losing pencils, 4. wearing mismatched socks to a Faculty meeting, 5. hogging the blankets). One of these days, he might write it down. She’d get a kick out of it.

_Necromancer’s mercy_ seemed to him a stupendously moronic custom even in the context of the entire premise of formal duelling; cruel, too. On the table, Lieutenant Dyas called, “Marta the Second.”

Cam looked down at him and said, “Warden?” There was no uncertainty in her voice, and she would not ask him to call it off.

“You can’t hit her in the head,” he told her. “I think. I choose when you’re done.”

Her right eyebrow rose a minute fraction of an inch in question. He tapped his finger on his knee in response. She trusted him not to call it too soon, and he despised that he would know what “too soon” meant.

“Just tell me how to play it.”

Later, his analytic mind would fill in the gaps of his immediate perception. It would supply the way Jeannemary the Fourth strained against her necromancer’s grip, how the cavalier of the Third licked his lips, the threat of a smile on the face of Gideon the Ninth, the only person in the room who had seen Camilla fight.

Coronabeth Tridentarius called. Palamedes leaned back in his chair.

“Cam. Go loud.”

He had never had the occasion to really watch her fight. The trajectory of her body was not beautiful, nothing like a dance or a prayer or whatever else the poets might have called it; Camilla moved like the fulfilment of a deadly promise, every strike of a pledge of destruction. Palamedes had always known her as a force of nature but Camilla Hect in flight was a natural disaster, a tectonic shift in the fabric of the universe, like watching in horrified silence as a single spark of flame set an entire civilisation ablaze. She left the Second cavalier no room to breathe as she harassed her with strike after perfect strike, with none of Dyas’ soldier’s economy but all the ferocity of a solar storm.

When the rapier speared through Camilla’s forearm, Palamedes almost called it. He saw the curl of her lips, saw in his mind’s eye the edge of the blade scrape along Camilla’s ulna and nick the ulnar artery, had already drawn in the breath to cry _mercy_ , but that magnificent creature, that fearless, brilliant fool dropped her rapier, grabbed the lieutenant’s wrist, and _yanked_.

As Camilla stood over her opponent, one booted foot pressed into the back of her opponent so Dyas’ face was pushed into the wood of the table and her dislocated arm was held at an unnatural angle, Captain Deuteros broke.

Palamedes, who had spent years of his childhood learning to control his combustible temper, sprung to his feet to set Lieutenant Dyas’ glenohumeral joint before he rounded on the captain. It was possible that he would regret this later, when the sheer and primal terror of watching the blood ooze from Camilla’s forearm and knowing that her opponent had aimed for worse had abated. But not yet. The blood in his veins had been temporarily replaced with cold, burning fury, the necromantic, atrophied muscle of his heart pumping so frantically he could feel his pulse in his ears. He could not remember the last time he had raised his voice in anger, but he roared now until his throat was raw. He plucked the keyring from Marta Dyas’ shaking fingers and turned his back on them in disdain.

Cam sat on the edge of the table, the field of her victory, her hand clapped over the wound. Blood seeped freely from between her fingers. Her dark eyes looked black when she met his gaze, her pupils almost blown out with adrenaline, and she quirked the corner of her mouth at him.

“Missed the bone,” she said, as if that was that.

Palamedes did not rake his hands through his hair or tear at his clothes, but it was a close thing. “Remember that you’re using a rapier, please.”

“I’m not making excuses, but she was quick as hell —”

There was a script for this conversation, developed organically over the years, for the nights she came home with a fresh bandage and the days he was summoned to the hospital wards where she lay limp and insensate while they sutured lacerations and set fractures — the latter was had only happened the once, thank the Emperor, but Palamedes knew his lines. He did not get to say them, this time.

When Cam hauled herself up to stand, Palamedes’ handkerchief tied over the still-seeping wound as a makeshift bandage, and he saw the way she carefully did not rotate her forearm, Palamedes thought he might explode. He had assessed the damage (1. missed the bone, 2. no major arteries affected, 3. would heal fine if allowed to rest), and Cam had quietly told him not to be a dolt, but hearing her drawl “Right, second round” as if she was looking forward to it twisted something in him to the point of breaking.

And then the Reverend Daughter said, “The Ninth House will represent the Sixth House,” and “Death first to vultures and scavengers,” and Jeannemary the Fourth vaulted onto the table and cried “Fidelity, and the Emperor!” and Palamedes allowed himself to breathe again. Silas Octakiseron called him an unfinished inbred, which barely registered, and referred to Camilla as a mad dog, which prompted Camilla wrapped her uninjured hand around his wrist in case he decided to murder the boy where he stood. He didn’t, but he did consider it.

They held war-counsel with the Fourth and the Ninth, after everyone else left. It pained Palamedes to involve the Fourth House in this, who were after all just children who had lost two people they loved, but he felt strongly that if he did not, they would attempt to find the Fifth’s murderer on their own, which could only lead to disaster. He did not know them well but he remembered himself and Cam at fourteen, too inquisitive for their own good, only prevented from grievous bodily harm by Cam’s unerring instincts and the general lack of murderous entities stalking the stacks of the Great Library of the Sixth. Already, Jeannemary the Fourth, shadows like bruises under her eyes and looking manic, was trying to rush into action.

“Don’t be so Fourth,” Palamedes told her, trying to be kind. “We should split up. We’re fighting a battle on two fronts here. Frankly — I would not leave Lady Septimus unguarded, sans cavalier, with just the First House to guard her.” He did not even want to _think_ about her lying in her sickroom by herself, holding on by her fingernails, defenceless in the face of those who had already proved themselves callous enough to exploit a dying woman’s weakness.

The Reverend Daughter said, “Her keys are gone. What’s the attraction now?”

Camilla said, “Vulnerability,” because she understood.

Palamedes nodded, noticing for the first time the bloody thumbprints on the lenses of his glasses. “Yes. It can’t just be a game of keys, Nonagesimus. Why did Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent die, when they had nothing on them but a facility key and their own good selves? Why has Protesilaus gone missing, when the most he would have had was his facility key? Is he still down there? Who died before this challenge even began? And then there’s the issue of the other Houses. I do not know about you, Reverend Daughter, but until Cam’s healed up, I plan on wetting myself lavishly.

Camilla did not roll her eyes at him but she said gruffly: “Warden, it’s just my right hand -”

“Hark at her!” he cried, finally losing his grip on his composure. “Just your right hand. _My_ right hand, more like. God, Cam, I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”

She did not respond to that, knowing it was true. The makeshift bandage on her arm was almost soaked through with blood and Palamedes’ heart still hammered in his chest. He already felt astonishingly bereft, a part of him not working properly, like a system not responding. He could see the pain in Cam’s eyes, in the slight twist of her mouth, the angle of her shoulders. The adrenaline was still flooding her system, dulling the sensation, but she would crash sooner than she thought and he needed her to be sitting down when that happened because even on a good day, he held no illusions about his ability to physically hold her up.

He only paid attention to the negotiations about further proceedings with perhaps half an ear, until the Ninth House cavalier uttered the words “Sex Pal” unironically and jerked him out of his gloomy ruminations.

“You — do you _talk_?” Isaac Tettares said, wild-eyed.

“You’ll wish she didn’t,” said Camilla, while Palamedes frantically searched his pockets and the sleeves of his robes for more handkerchiefs to staunch her bleeding. He did not find any (probably because Cam kept the supply, a fact of life he was prone to forgetting in the best of circumstances), but the inner breast pocket of his robes did eventually yield an emergency supply of coag-drops. Cam kneed him in the thigh when the sour-smelling liquid sizzled on her skin, which took him by surprise. He had expected her to punch him in the bicep.

The Reverend Daughter followed behind them as they walked to Dulcinea’s sickroom. She had pulled up the hood of her oppressive robes of office so that her painted face was obscured in darkness and she had not said a word since they had parted ways with her cavalier and the Fourth House teens. Palamedes did not mind; he knew that Camilla did not trust the Ninth necromancer further than she could throw her (quite far, actually, if she put her mind to it), but deferred to her adept on this. He could not _quite_ explain it himself, beyond the fact that he was seriously impressed with her necromantic dexterity and that he knew, with a certainty his conscious mind also could not quite explain, that she was not responsible for the deaths of Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent. The Ninth House pair obviously had enough of their own shit to deal with, to be frank, to meddle overmuch in other people’s affairs, even if Nonagesimus was tenebrous in the extreme. She positioned herself against the wall by the door of the sickroom and set up her own (by Palamedes’ estimation) devilishly intricate bone wards, and further retreated into herself and the shadows of her hood.

Palamedes sat Camilla down on a rickety chair by the window, where there was light, and allowed himself two minutes’ unwise indulgence to check on the Duchess Septimus, who was uneasily asleep but otherwise unchanged.

“I shouldn’t have let that happen,” he told Cam when he crouched in front of her and peeled back the layers of bloody fabric to actually get a good look at her arm.

She rolled her eyes at him. “She called you out. You called her bluff.”

“It solved nothing.” At least the Second’s rapier was sharp; the wound was clean and neat, no ragged edges. He dug up the antiseptic gel from the medical kit he had deposited in the sickroom earlier and set to work. “Beating up her cavalier just aggravated Deuteros more than she was already. Kicking her knee was a mistake, by the way.”

“You’re right. I should have kicked her in the mouth, that would have shut her up.”

“For God’s sake, Cam! Be serious.”

She shrugged with her good arm. “I am, Warden. The Second asked for a fight and I gave them one.”

Palamedes sighed. It probably was that simple, deep down, but there was still a strand of tension he could not let go of, like the string of an instrument strung to tightly, threatening to tear at any moment. To find the source of that tension he needed time to sit and clear his head and _think,_ but the past couple of hours had been too loud to hear is own thoughts over the clamour of people accusing each other of everything at once without a shred of evidence. On the bed, Dulcinea’s lungs rattled on an exhale.

“Stay with me, Warden,” Cam said, touching his arm. The weight of her fingers was an anchor; he leaned into it, drawing his awareness into himself and concentrating on that single point of contact.

“This needs stitches,” he said, when the storm had quieted. She did not flinch when he brought out the needle but he could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek when she thought he wasn’t looking. He wrapped her arm in fresh, clean bandages when he was done, tight enough that they wouldn’t shift when she inevitably moved more than she should, and only when he had stared at his work for ten minutes and there was no bloom of fresh blood on the material did he rock back on his heels to close his eyes for the count of ten. He took Cam’s uninjured hand in his own and squeezed, once, knowing that she understood, and went to check on Dulcinea again.

Not long after (had it even been an hour?), Gideon the Ninth crashed through the door to the sickroom, covered in blood and osseus dust, cradling the cooling corpse of Jeannemary the Fourth in her arms. The look in her startling golden eyes was that of a wild animal cornered, and as she stood panting in the doorway time seemed to stop; the Reverend Daughter was the first to react, to start towards her, but her cavalier flinched back so violently that she ended up with her back pressed to the wall and Nonagesimus froze where she stood. It was Camilla who, injured hand on her rapier, persuaded her to lay the girl ever so gently down on the well-scrubbed floorboards, where Palamedes took one look at her and knew she was dead. It took another twenty minutes to get an approximate account of what had happened out of her, alternating between Palamedes gently probing and the Reverend Daughter’s pacing back and forth, snarling insults into the room.

Gideon took all of this without reaction, staring either at the body or at her hands. She trailed behind them as they took Jeannemary to the morgue and laid her and her dead necromancer to rest next to the bodies of the Fifth, mute once more; Nonagesimus stalked off eventually, to do Palamedes knew not what, and left her cavalier behind like an unwanted pet. It was shockingly easy to get her to sit on a hard stool in the scrubbed kitchen for Cam to pluck the splinters of bone from the myriad of sharp cuts while Palamedes examined the bodies, but when he came back out to check on them both, she was gone.

“She just left,” Cam said, shrugging, and cleaned the pair of sharp-pointed tweezers she’d been using. In a bowl on the table, twenty bloody bits of bone shone scarlet and wet in the harsh electric light. “Didn’t seem like a good idea to hold her back.”

Palamedes washed his hands thoroughly in one of the sinks so he could scrub the heels of his hands across his face. His mind was a-whir with suspicions and anxiety and deafening background noise. He couldn’t remember how much sleep he’d gotten the previous night, but it definitely hadn’t been enough. “Leave her be for a bit,” he said. “She’s had a shock.”

His cavalier said nothing. She returned her tools to the medical kit, each in its place, moving a little awkwardly so as to not jostle her right arm more than necessary. He could read the frustration in the line of her jaw, and knew there was nothing he could do to ease her burden until he figured out what the hell was going on in this thrice-damned pile of rotting bricks.

“We need to talk to Nonagesimus when she comes back,” he said instead. “Make sure we’re on the same page.”

“As you say, Warden.”

He sighed, adjusted his glasses, and leaned back against a cabinet, too weary to hold himself up. After a moment, Camilla joined him, pressing the point of her left shoulder into his right upper arm because it was the highest she could reach, leaning like this. It had been a long day in a series of long days, and Palamedes could not shake the thought that their troubles had only just begun.

**Author's Note:**

> extra points for everyone who spotted the Hamilton lyrics, they were not almost an accident
> 
> on tumblr @darlingofdots


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